Meta was about to launch Asgard's Wrath 2, the biggest Virtual Reality ARPG (Action Role Play Game) ever created. However, most gamers remain skeptical of VR. So in order to launch this game successfully, we needed something disruptive to get the attention and respect of this notoriously tough-to-please audience.

Our objective — convince ARPG fans that AW2 was the 'must-have' AAA game of 2023. We need to transform a little-known Virtual Reality game to a VR headset-selling franchise— during the holiday season—which meant competing with the release of the world's biggest game titles, not just VR games.

The launch of the Meta Quest 3 VR headset represented a huge leap in graphics and performance compared to earlier models—providing an opportunity to strengthen our market leadership. But with Apple announcing their Vision Pro headset shortly after, interest in the category intensified and competition was never more fierce.

Asgard’s Wrath 2 was the perfect game to demonstrate the advancements in Meta Quest 3’s capabilities, so we needed the perfect time and place to make a splash — The Game Awards.

The Game Awards is the biggest night in the gaming calendar, for VIPs and fans alike. VIPs from the gaming community attend to collect awards and announce the trailers for any new titles due for release, while over 100 million people tune in to watch online.

However, most of this audience had tuned in for the blockbuster ARPG titles, such as God Of War, Baldur's Gate 3, and Final Fantasy XVI — not our little-known VR game.

The gaming community is notoriously anti-advertising, so anything on display other than pure entertainment is widely condemned and criticized online.

Undeterred, we wanted to take advantage of this huge, captive audience by crashing the ceremony. So, as the Asgard's Wrath 2 trailer dropped, Loki burst into the scene to warn of his impending chaos — and the stunt that awaited them outside.

Asgard's Wrath 2 is a fully immersive, groundbreaking VR game in which Loki, the game's antagonist, unleashes chaos with his army of beasts and monsters through magical portals.

Despite advancements in VR, gamers are skeptical about it, and think it can't deliver the same excitement as a console game. So, to launch Asgard's Wrath 2, the biggest VR ARPG (Action Role Play Game) ever created, we knew we needed something disruptive to get the attention and respect of this notoriously tough-to-please audience. And convince ARPG fans that AW2 was the 'must-have' AAA game of 2023.

Our goal was to go from a little-known Virtual Reality game to a VR headset-selling franchise in just three months—made even more challenging as we released during the holiday season—which meant competing with the release of the world's biggest game titles, not just VR games.

We needed to reach some of the most skeptical and highly critical people in the world – ARPG players. Not only do they hate being advertised to, they’re extremely vocal online with their opinions and are highly skeptical that VR could deliver the ARPG experience they’ve come to expect from the “real” ARPG blockbusters they love.

We couldn’t just tell them this new VR game is more immersive than any game before. We needed to build a world around them that was so immersive they couldn’t resist. Asgard’s Wrath 2 is a disrupter among ARPG with its first of its kind immersive technology. So we disrupted our audience as much as we could in as many places as we could where we knew they were watching – from opening a portal in the middle of an NBA game, to surprising them at TwitchCon, to highjacking dashboard and doorbell cameras.

Even with the world’s most ambitious and exciting VR game ready to launch, it's hard to get gamers excited about a Virtual Reality game when they don't have a headset.

The Creative Idea: Without a VR headset or AR filter, we pulled the characters out of the game and unleashed them into the sky over LA. We put Loki's portal in the sky and chaos to the streets, making Asgard's Wrath 2 more reality than virtual

We targeted the gaming industry's most influential personalities and journalists as they left the year's most high-profile industry awards ceremony. Thousands of VIP guests were physically immersed in the world of the game as the sounds of chaos echoed around the streets, cosplay characters roamed the crowds, and the sky was filled with monsters and beasts as they attempted to escape from Loki's portal.

We grabbed the attention of the gaming world by gatecrashing the biggest night on their calendar—The Game Awards. As thousands in attendance and over 100M gamers watched online, Loki interrupted to warn of the chaos that awaited outside.

And what did they discover outside? That we had ripped a hole in their reality.

One hundred feet in the air, a 3D, holographic portal filled with gods and monsters ripped open the sky—without AR filters or VR headsets.

We used the world's largest suspended transparent screen, heavy-duty cranes, 3D spatial audio, volumetric lighting, and pyrotechnics to create a unique spectacle in the sky — blurring the lines between virtual and reality—as this OOH activation captured the attention of The Game Awards attendees.

The in-real-life portal could appear and disappear instantly—bringing the immersiveness of VR to the real world and a promise to our VR-skeptical, console-loving audience that VR has finally arrived.

The stunt reached 1.7Billion impressions.*

The live stream audience at the game awards topped 118M views.

Organic views of the portal reached over 20M+.

Thousands of people saw the portal live as it loomed 100ft in the air in Downtown LA, outside the Lakers/Clippers basketball arena, on game day.

Perhaps more importantly, we turned skeptics into advocates, making the front page of Reddit and receiving overwhelming support for the stunt on social media. Our favorite comment is: "This is the coolest thing I've seen since the Tupac hologram."

As for our KPIs, Asgard's Wrath 2 was the #1 most downloaded Meta Quest 3 game during the holiday season, and Meta Quest 3 consideration increased by 31.7%. We also impressed the critics in attendance at the Game Awards with multiple 10/10 game reviews.

*According to Spark Media

Our ambition was to create the impossible—a VR experience without a VR headset. This had never been done before, so we had to merge a unique combination of technologies to create this unmissable spectacle:

Enormous, transparent LED screens

Hyper-realistic Unreal Engine animations

3D spatial audio

We used cranes, hidden within a construction zone, to hang the 3000sqft transparent screen, which vanished in the night sky when inactive. Our animations, built exclusively for this event, used forced perspective and every pixel of the screen to make the characters jump from the portal, fly behind it, and reach for the audience.

Our challenge was to create a realistic, floating visual in a dense urban area in under a month. It had to be visible from one specific area, so location options were limited & smaller than ideal. Needing permissions and permits from The Game Awards, LA Live and the City of LA.